Tagging of walking paths accessible only with a guide

In Namibia, some walking paths in national and private reserves are accessible only with a guide.

What would be the appropriate way to tag them?
access=no + guided=yes?

1 Like

access=no means nobody is allowed to use it. What you want is access=private

1 Like

In the case mentioned above, wouldn’t it be closer to ‘access=permit’?
If someone who normally does not have access rights is required to obtain separate clearance or can enter only when accompanied by an authorized person, it seems closer to ‘permit’.

In addition, the accompanying tag ‘guided=yes’ strikes me as quite an ingenious idea.
I hadn’t thought of that before, but I think it is a very fitting tag for places that can only be accessed when accompanied by a guide.

5 Likes

I would say so, even under the original definition that required the permit to be “routinely granted”. I disagree with that constraint, but this case even seems to satisfy it.

We already have guide=*, which sounds very similar. For example, some but not all tourism=museum and tourism=gallery offer guided tours. Unfortunately, the tagging scheme doesn’t seem to distinguish between tour guides merely being available and tour guides being required (such as at the Vatican Museum).

2 Likes

You could duck tag it as guided=only

The guide=* tag mostly seems to be used for the type of guide that’s available. It might not be a good idea to mix the information whether a guide is required into the same tag.

The question is about paths where an ordinary person cannot get a permit. They have to take a guided tour or a guide. The guides are getting a permission. Sometimes as a result of being employed by the reserve.

Sure, it’s just that parallel guide=* and guided=* keys might be confusing. I know we have some similar close calls, like community_adopted=* versus community_adopter=*, but they were part of the same tagging scheme. If we consider the Vatican Museum example I gave, no one would consider it a private museum – not with such crowds inside and lines outside. So access=private would be misleading even if guided=only would be accurate.

I figure that an ordinary person can get a permit by accompanying a tour guide. But permit already suffers from enough confusion without overloading more nuances onto it.

It occurs to me that we already have a solution for this on campgrounds. If you can only camp as part of a group, that’s group_only=yes. If you can’t just decide to use the facility on your own without registering somehow, that’s impromptu=no. The fact that a guide is involved could be supervised=yes. Admittedly three tags for this single requirement seems a bit much, but it would probably avoid stretching access tags behind their intended meanings.

I agree that adding another access value is a stretch. Therefore, the suggestion was to use an additional tag. The combination of access=private + guided=yes is simple and clear. It would provide an exception similar to the combination of access=private +foot=yes.

supervised=yes seems to be applicable also to ordinary unguided walks in places like the US national parks, where “there is a person who supervises the place” in the form of the park rangers.

Would mappers and data consumers reliably interpret this combination to mean private access except for a guide? Or would we ever need to tag private access even with a guide?

I would caution against establishing guided=* as a new mode of transportation alongside foot=*, which is essentially what you’re suggesting by drawing an analogy to foot=* overriding access=*. This is orthogonal to the mode of transportation. After all, some guided trails are walkable, while others are only traveled on horseback. As long as we rely on access keys to clarify highway=path, this could be a significant source of ambiguity.

1 Like

it also sounds like fee=yes or (toll=yes?) would be applicable

1 Like

guided would not apply only to walking. Similarly, there are tracks that can be driven only with a guide.

What would the combination highway=path access=private foot=yes guided=only mean for private vehicles or the public on foot? It feels like multiple moving parts that need to be glued together somehow


1 Like

That means whatever the combination highway=path access=private foot=yes means (I couldn’t figure out what’s the role of foot=yes given highway=path), and that the use requires a guide.

We seem to be in agreement that guided is not another means of transportation. I suggest we treat it similar to fee and lit - as an additional attribute of the element.

BTW, I was proposing guided=yes rather than guided=only.

How about foot=guided? So guided would not become a means of transport but a refinement of what kind of transport by foot is allowed?

1 Like

Would escorted=only help, or make it even worse?

Only uses I can see are “escort” in regard to brothels & attraction:minheight:escorted, which isn’t that far off what we’re talking about in needing to have somebody with you.

“Escort” does sound more directly relevant than “guide” when it comes to the right of access. For example, some tunnels require hazmat trucks to pull over and arrange for an escort before proceeding. Meanwhile, I’ve been on plenty of self-guided tours through parks. Maybe this is splitting hairs though.

I think the requirement to follow an escort or guide should correspond to the value required or only. Otherwise, yes just says that an escort or guide is available. We don’t need to make this distinction with tolls, because there’s no such thing as an optional toll. Precedent includes reservation=required and membership=required, with plenty of existing usage.

If the value really needs to be yes or no for some reason, then guide_required=* has some scant use.

1 Like

I like it!

Yeah, why not use access=guided | Tags | OpenStreetMap Taginfo as the access value itself? Then if it differs by mode of transport, the usual applies and you tag vehicle=guided or foot=private, etc.

=permit is already bad enough. There needs to be more justification than having an idea to invent another another access=*
This doesn’t explain who’s allowed to use it with guides. Eg the requirement may be =permit , then you have a conflict.
There are already toll= , group_only= , reservation= , and membership=

1 Like

Yes, guided would answer the question, “Could someone help me once I’m there?” Access tags are about answering the question, “May I access the feature in the first place?” If you’re telling me about a trail I know nothing about and say that I need a guide to go there, do I need to pay for a guide? Must they be a particular guide? Is the guide program restricted to members of a particular group, or to groups wanting to go there?

1 Like